Summary
The Debt Collector gets by on the strength of solid action and a surprisingly arresting lead, but it gets a little bogged down in the middle by searching for more emotional depth than it needs.
The Debt Collector (2026) is an exceedingly simple movie that occasionally hamstrings itself by trying to be a more complex one. Slotting very neatly into the ever-expanding “man of extreme violence turns on his former employers” canon, it’s a Thai actioner about shooting and stabbing that runs much too long on account of a boggy middle act that tries to add unnecessary texture and emotional depth.
If the entire movie was like the opening scene, it would have been ideal. In it, Num (Nadech Kugimiya) rolls up at a gym to collect a debt – obviously – and sets about dispensing oodles of clearly-framed violence. It’s as clear a mission statement as you’ll ever see in a movie. This, says director Surapong Ploensang, is a movie about a national heartthrob committing extreme violence. And it is – at least until it isn’t.
After that opening, Num ends up in prison for a decade following the death of an innocent. Close to his release, he’s diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour that, without radiotherapy, will kill him within a month. Given how he marks off days on his calendar, he elected to eschew treatment. But he also elected to keep his head down, taking a job as a deliveryman to sulk in peace. The screenplay, co-written by Ploensang alongside Onusa Donsawai and Pun Homchuen, adroitly establishes really clear stakes. Here’s a man trying to live out his final days in relative peace, but who’s unable to do so after taking on some responsibility for Grandma Lek (Kunkanit Khumkrong) and her cute granddaughter, Nid Noi (Ploypaphas Fonkaewsiwaporn), who are being harassed by goons at the behest of Po (Daou Pittaya Saechua), the psycho son of loan shark syndicate matriarch Madam Pin (Nuanprang Trichit).
You can predict most of the plot from the premise alone. Num sticks up for Lek and Nid Noi, things go wrong, and he decides to go after the bad guys directly and very, very violently. It’s a classic template that never really fell out of fashion but was definitely re-popularised by John Wick. Ploensang is happy to oblige, for the most part. But this movie makes a mistake that Wick and co. didn’t, getting bogged down in too much faux sentiment in the middle.
This stuff revolves around Num’s past – also violent – in an orphanage alongside Kong (Chaiwat Thongsaeng), who, unlike him, grew up into a straight-shooting cop who now has the honour of trying to track his old pal down as he rampages across Thailand. The monochrome flashbacks and fairly leaden dialogue in these sequences feel like a transplant from a different movie, but Kong becomes a bellyaching co-protagonist, sapping a lot of focus from Num’s single-minded mission.
This is perhaps why The Debt Collector, at a shade over two hours, feels wildly overlong. There’s always room for more emotional depth, and many people – including me, frankly – complain that genre movies often keep things too simple and adhere too closely to the usual formula. But this is a movie of such kineticism, with such a dour outlook, that it works better as a kind of arch morality tale. As soon as it tries to get into the weeds of the interiority of stab-happy debt collectors, it gets a little lost. I’d have preferred a leaner take on the same general idea that played up the solid action and clear stakes, as in, say, The Furious (although that’s probably an unfair comparison).
Still, I don’t want to be too harsh unnecessarily. This is a solid enough movie with very decent action and a surprisingly engaging performance from Kugimiya, who obviously looks the part but is also able to sell it better than I expected. After the rather maudlin middle, things pick up steam again on the way to the end, so the time spent watching probably won’t feel wasted. But there was a tighter, more engaging movie to be made here, and I’d have preferred to have seen it.
